AMD Radeon HD 6870 and HD 6850 benchmarks

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Banned

The Radeon 6850 offers plenty of performance for today's games. We feel it's sweet spot gaming wise is for gamers with a monitor up-to roughly 1600x1200, even 1920x1200. At that resolution pretty much any game will play excellent with good options in image quality settings like AA.

The Radeon HD 6870 is as far as I am concerned, definitely the more interesting card. It does have a handful more shader processors over what we expected initially, and armed with a phat 900 MHz clock frequency this product simply makes really good sense. It will bring a lot of value to the table but will also allow you to play your games at 1920x1200 extremely well. From a price point of view that makes this product really nice. AMD needed two GeForce GTX 460 cards of their own ... and these are it. Bare in mind though, coming from an R5870 you'd be taking a small perf step down.

Time to wrap things up, the Radeon 6800 series naming wise still feels a little weird, as we all expected it to be named the 6700 series. Regardless of that, the two product launched today fit really well into the upper mid-range segment of the graphics industry. Priced right these two cards can be really interesting for the PC aficionados that like to play games on their PC without spending truckloads of money. And it is exactly that last sentiment that makes ATI AMD so very successful lately.

Now if you own a Radeon HD 5850 or something more spicy, then there's no need to upgrade just yet; unless watching 3D movies is a big thing for you. But if you come from the Radeon HD 3000/4000 series, well ... that's where this DX11 class products start to really make sense. But scouts honor, the two cards tested today run beautifully, seem faster than the reference GTX 460 cards and can even match the GTX 470. The cards neither are noisy or running hot and the overall game performance really is spot on.

For 249 USD / 209 EUR the R6870 is positioned against the GeForce GTX 460 with 1024MB graphics memory, now the R6870 is faster, however NVIDIA will pull their trump card, the GeForce GTX 470 and lower its price on that product, significantly I must add.

As of today you can spot these price-cuts, NVIDIA confirmed that the GeForce GTX 460 1024MB will now cost US $199 / 169 EUR including VAT and the GeForce GTX 470 is to cost US $259 = 219 EUR including VAT, pricing it very close to the Radeon HD 6870, and these two cards are close to each other performance wise alright. So yeah, that will be your baseline and benchmark to judge from right there and here on.

Banned

The Radeon 6850 offers plenty of performance for today's games. We feel it's sweet spot gaming wise is for gamers with a monitor up-to roughly 1600x1200, even 1920x1200. At that resolution pretty much any game will play excellent with good options in image quality settings like AA.

The Radeon HD 6870 is as far as I am concerned, definitely the more interesting card. It does have a handful more shader processors over what we expected initially, and armed with a phat 900 MHz clock frequency this product simply makes really good sense. It will bring a lot of value to the table but will also allow you to play your games at 1920x1200 extremely well. From a price point of view that makes this product really nice. AMD needed two GeForce GTX 460 cards of their own ... and these are it. Bare in mind though, coming from an R5870 you'd be taking a small perf step down.

Time to wrap things up, the Radeon 6800 series naming wise still feels a little weird, as we all expected it to be named the 6700 series. Regardless of that, the two product launched today fit really well into the upper mid-range segment of the graphics industry. Priced right these two cards can be really interesting for the PC aficionados that like to play games on their PC without spending truckloads of money. And it is exactly that last sentiment that makes ATI AMD so very successful lately.

Now if you own a Radeon HD 5850 or something more spicy, then there's no need to upgrade just yet; unless watching 3D movies is a big thing for you. But if you come from the Radeon HD 3000/4000 series, well ... that's where this DX11 class products start to really make sense. But scouts honor, the two cards tested today run beautifully, seem faster than the reference GTX 460 cards and can even match the GTX 470. The cards neither are noisy or running hot and the overall game performance really is spot on.

For 249 USD / 209 EUR the R6870 is positioned against the GeForce GTX 460 with 1024MB graphics memory, now the R6870 is faster, however NVIDIA will pull their trump card, the GeForce GTX 470 and lower its price on that product, significantly I must add.

As of today you can spot these price-cuts, NVIDIA confirmed that the GeForce GTX 460 1024MB will now cost US $199 / 169 EUR including VAT and the GeForce GTX 470 is to cost US $259 = 219 EUR including VAT, pricing it very close to the Radeon HD 6870, and these two cards are close to each other performance wise alright. So yeah, that will be your baseline and benchmark to judge from right there and here on.

Member

Wow the 6870 > 470. Didn't see that coming. And it does it with a much, much lower power draw and heat output. I thought these cards were just coming out to take out the 460 but the 6870 has taken out the 470 as well.

cyberheater said:

The GTX 460 is something like $70 cheaper then the HD6850 in the UK. That's quite a gap.

Member

Member

awesome they're already out! now i just need to find something that meets the following criteria:

-significantly more powerful than a 4870 1gb
-cool and quiet
-DX11 capable
-less than $300

to be cool/quiet i'm probably going to have to get a 5000 series. the first run of cards with new chips are always hot and loud until they can tweak and improve. my 4870 was a gift from a friend that didn't want it anymore after a few months of use, but it's VERY loud and it's a hot running dual-slotter.

Member

My 8800gt is failing and needs to be replaced and I wouldn't have to fiddle with PSU wires if I went for a 6850 instead of a GTX 460 so that is pretty enticing to me. My only worry is I've always used Nvidia cards in my PCs and I'm not used to ATI/AMDs drivers which don't always receive the best of plaudits.

The GTX 460 is something like $70 cheaper then the HD6850 in the UK. That's quite a gap.